Stops, and looks back, and stops and looks on man, lets, bright eyes, clear complexion, and | Less fearful on this day, the limping hare neat attire, and children with shining faces, all quietly walking over that "living landscape," beneath those glorious trees, towards the white church from whose tower the sound of the bell came undulating on the ear. It vividly brought to memory that last poetry of Mrs. Hemans: Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set free, The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark Warbles with heaven-tuned song; the lulling brook Murmurs more gently down the deep-worn glen. While from yon lowly roof, whose curling smoke O'ermounts the mist, is heard, at intervals, "With dove-like wings, Peace o'er yon village broods. The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness. Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large; Miller's "A Day in the Woods," dedicated to the Countess of Blessington, is a beautifully printed book, and contains a series of tales and poems, told by a number of young persons wandering about in the woods, "with ample interchange of sweet discourse." It smells of green leaves and flowery dells, and you hear the murmuring of brooks. It is full of eloquence and picturesque beauty. He minutely and fondly dwells on old customs and habits, and is so thoroughly acquainted with all the subjects that he writes upon, that it stamps the work with a peculiar value. None but a true poet could have written it. We will make a few selections, that the reader may judge for himself of the exquisite poetical material of Miller's mind. "See how beautiful the sunshine sleeps on the opening flowers, and those that blow upon the shady banks stand amid light of their own creating. Here comes a heavy bee; he belongs to no hive, but is a free denizen of the hills and woods, and stores his sweets in the bole of some mighty tree, where he can se curely feed upon his treasures in the winter, safe from the howling tempest. How gayly he flies alcag to the deep low music of his own wings! Now he has plunged into that bluebell's cup, head foremost, like a diver who dashes at once to the river depths; so he has plunged through the loosened lustre of the petals, the clear cool crystal of the folded dewdrop, and is now revelling at the fountain of the flower's sweetness. Happy bee! the range of the sunny hills is all thine own; thou canst sail down the fragrant valleys, or carry thy merry minstrelsy through the leafy forestbowers, then dash away in sunshine and song to the breezy banks of the far-off murmuring river." "Observe that tall young woman, whose pale face is saddened by sorrow. Solitary and silent she has ventured again into the green fields, the first time this for many weeks. Her six illustratious, published by Van Voorst, Beauties of the Country, with twentyeye has taken a long sweep across the blue London, 1837, is a beautifully printed volheavens. Fain would she glance through the fleecy silver that skirts the loosened clouds, ume, with fine descriptions of rural custhrough the golden portals of Paradise would toms, objects, and rich with Mr. Miller's she peer, along the ranks of winged Cherubim peculiar eloquence. In his vocation of and Seraphim, harp-sounding, and the trumpet- basket making he has journeyed over the blowing archangels, and there look for one greater part of England, and whether whom she yet loves. Now are her eyes rivet- wearied or otherwise, nature in all its varied upon a little knot of wild violets. Disturb not her contemplation! a vision is rising beous aspects has been viewed by him with fore her. Mark those compressed lips: she a loving heart and fond eye. Every field sees her once beautiful boy, as he lay last had its peculiar charm, every hedge was spring laughing and tumbling in the sunshine, filled with perfume, or associated with boyand running to and fro delirious with joy amongst ish and happy days. He has stopped to the flowers! Oh! her eyes are filling with rest at the wayside inn, and there drank his tears, for she now sees two small blanched mug of sparkling, healthy ale, and ate his hands resting upon the ghastly linen; so pale bit of bread and cheese with a grateful are they that the wan lilies throw not a ray heart, every drop and morsel of it sweetof light upon the frightful whiteness. The few violets, too, that form a wreath around his anened by toil and his long walk. There he gelic face, appear to shrink as if they pined for has conversed with farmers and the varithe darkness of the grave to hide the loveliness ous classes that gather together at a roadwhich death hath claimed. The last time she side inn. Many years of careful observagazed on flowers was in a still church-yard: tion, and his innate poetical feeling, have some hand threw a few into the grave, and they enabled him to write books full of interest were soon broken by the heavy clods, that sounded through her heart as they fell upon and truth, and such as we verily believe the little coffin; and that bell-toll! toll! toll! his countrymen will not willingly let die. so slowly and sadly. But she is journeying His is the rare faculty of painting to the homeward, a weeping flower worshipper." eye, old woods, flowery valleys, and flowing that it gives a man an intense desire to rivers, with such minute beauty and force, leave the dust, turmoil, and heat of city life, "humming with a restless crowd,' and to plunge into the cool, shady, deep and silent woods. We think of refreshing slumbers, where no noise of vehicles rattling over stony pavements intrudes, but the hum of insects and the fragrant air enter at the window. The dew has fallen, and we have the music of the leaves as the winds on their onward course mildly whisper to them. We are awakened by the song of birds; we behold flowers and grass sparkling with diamond drops and glittering as if with joy, and "Let us turn to the busy haunts of menthe dark alleys of the metropolis. Mark the open casement opposite. There stands a broken jug which contains a few flowers; a care-stricken woman is gazing fixedly upon them. Saw ye not that faint smile, that small opening of light upon a sky which is nearly all night? Those few flowers, almost withered as they are through long keeping, brought back to her mind the remembrance of by-gone years. She was wafted back on the wings of memory to the cottage of her fathers, and again saw the woodbine-trellised window, through which she had so often watched the lark springing from the daisy's side,' by which it had all night slept, and scattering music on the earth as it carolled high up the vaulted heavens; and the neat garden where her beehives stood, ere the humming denizens sallied forth to whisper love The "Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains, And liquid lapse of murmuring streams." MILTON. into the bosoms of the heath-bells. cuckoo's song also smote her ear while she gazed upon them, and she imagined cowslips nodded a fresh welcome as if they beckoned her home again. The gray linnet's note, the bird that built yearly in the furze bushes by the How much better all food tastes in the sedgy brook and sang so sweetly to the mur-country than in the city. This on many muring water, which answered again with its occasions, no doubt, arises from the pure liquid voice, as it welled away through the cresses and water lilies, and beneath the tall air, change of scene, and exercise; but rushes that she loved to gather. But she has most certainly the bread and butter, and turned away to soothe her child. Oh, she is a the milk and cream, meat and vegetables, flower worshipper." (freshly gathered from the garden,) are superior to what are generally procured in | hard sheaths; and the brave little robin, "sacred to the household gods," recalls to mind pleasurable thoughts of childhood, of "The Children in the Wood." And when summer comes, in imagination, he gazes on the sky-lark floating heavenward, and hears the blackbird's mellow voice, and loves the rolling river, the flowers, and grass, and hills and woods, and the village green with its oak, or sycamore, or elm, in the centre, and the old men sitting beneath it when their day's work is done, smoking their pipes, and talking about the weather, the appearance of the crops, the health and prosperity or adversity of their neighbors, while the children are rolling about on the grass. To him the summer's heat is mitigated and sweetened by the fragrant breath of the hay field, and he feels the coolness of the old woods, and sees the cattle standing knee-deep in the running streams. Miller is truly the city. But above all, there is generally a home feeling among country people, which carries with it many virtues. In cities there is scarcely such a place as home. We merely stay in such a street at such a number, and without the number we could with difficulty find our residences -for entire blocks of houses are often precisely similar in all respects. About the old homestead we love the very grass, and trees, and winding roads, the birds singing over our heads, the flowers blooming about us; and the atmosphere seems to bear joy and health with it. We think that We think that friendships are more apt to strike root and endure in the country, than in the city. For the most part, in cities, what is society so called, but a wearisome round of common places, stereotyped remarks, which give no insight into the character of the individual you are conversing with? and the same style of dress and mode of living and education form classes of which each individual constitutes a fragment, separate, but not distinct. In the country the young pass much time with one another, under the same roof; they are more thrown upon their own resources; they become intimate from the very fact of being acquainted with each other's character, disposition, trains of thought. Public opinion is but little felt, or little heeded, for they scarcely know its influence. There you find much originality, both in thought and observation, with a depth of sincerity, genuine, and fresh from the heart. The recollections of May-poles on the banks of the silver Trent, of sheep-shearing, and harvest home festivals "The promise of the spring, The summer's glory and the rich repose Of autumn, and the winter's silvery snow," (ROGERS' HUMAN LIFE,) have cheered many an hour of Miller's existence in the dark and unwholesome streets of London. He forgets not in his exile in the city, the country walks in frosty weather, the glow it gave to the blood, the deep blue sky, looking far higher than in summer-the hoar frost on the trees and hedges the freezing showers glazing everything on which they fell; he sees the hard brown buds, but thinks of the tender leaves and rich colors folded beneath their A novel with the title of "Gideon Giles, the Roper," appeared in London in 1841, with thirty-six illustrations by Edward Lambert. In this production Miller attempted to produce a true English work, to make the scenery and characters thoroughly English. The chief events of the story are such as had fallen under his own observation, and he wished to express his indignation against an unjust and cruel English law. The story turns upon the fact that a poor man can sell the goods he himself makes, in the town or parish in which he lives, without a license; but let him offer the same goods for sale in the neighboring villages, or at the doors of lonely and out of the way houses, where the inhabitants would be compelled to go miles to purchase such articles as he brings to their doors, and he is liable to a penalty of £40 or three months' imprisonment. The character of Ben Brust is capitally drawn, and excellently well supported throughout the work. He is described as a man of "remarkable exterior," large and fat, with a countenance that seemed as if it had never known care; there was a kind of "come day go day" appearance about him; he looked, to use a homely phrase, "a jolly-hearted fellow,”—and such a man in reality was Ben Brust, one who never troubled his head with what his neighbors thought about him, who never worked until he was fairly forced, or thought of obtaining new clothes until the old ones had all but dropped from his back. He looked too fat to think; he was too weighty a man for care to bend down; "waking thought" seldom sat on Ben's eyelids, for he had been heard to say that he never remembered being in bed five minutes without falling asleep; he was a philosopher in his way. If he was hungry he could make a meal in a turnip field; a bean stack was to Ben a banquet; had you named poverty to him he would have stared, and said, he knew no farmer of that name. Still, he loved a good dinner. A comfortable man was Ben Brust. Ben was married his wife was a thin, spare, cross-grained little woman, with a sharp vinegar aspect, so thin that she was nick named "Famine," while Ben was called "Plenty;" he would have bumped down three wives the size of his own, in any fair scale in England. Famine went out to work, while Plenty lay sleeping in the sunshine; she was scratching and saving, washed and cleaned for people in the village. Plenty sat on gates and stiles whistling, or sometimes, standing on the bridge, would spit in the water and watch it float away; and when the day was not very hot indeed, go on the other side to see it come through. "Oh, he is a lazy goodfor-nowt," his wife would exclaim, "but I never let him finger a farthing of my gettings; I keep my own cupboard under lock and key, and never trouble him for a bite or a sup, year in and year out; all I desire him to do is to keep himself." Ben, on the other hand, used to say, "A man's a fool that kills himself to keep himself. When a rich man dies he cannot take his wealth with him, and I've heard the parson advise folks to take no thought for the morrow; besides, it was a saying before I was born that there is but a groat a year between work and play, and they say that play gets it; all the comforts of life consist in snoring and brusting,' for such were the elegant terms he chose for sleep and food; as to clothes, a flower and a butterfly are finer than anybody in the land." Ben often wondered, too, "why a quart jug was no bigger." Nevertheless, Ben, with all his idleness and love of ale and meat, is a sturdy and fine specimen of a man. "He deals in russet yeas and honest kersey noes," and is ever ready to aid his fellow creatures, and has withal a heartiness and simplicity of character that interest the reader extremely in his fortunes. He can work zealously enough when it is for the benefit of another, in spite of his fondness for a quiet sleep on the soft grass under shady trees, places where he would throw himself down and think how foolish it was for the birds to take the trouble to fly about in the hot sunshine. We read the work to a couple of mechanics in their workshops. At first it hindered their work but slightly, but in the course of half an hour all work had ceased; the hammer and jack plane were quiet side by side. Their day's work was spoiled. We read till late in the evening, and early next morning were called upon to finish it; and so anxious were they to hear the conclusion that they could not go to work. They saw unerringly, how lifelike the characters were, and the cares and misfortunes and sterling qualities of Gideon Giles, found a way to their hearts and elicited deep sympathy. It is a noble book, written by a noble man, the owner of "no faint and milky heart." All the characters appear to have been drawn from individuals falling under Miller's own observation, and bits of scenery are described exquisitely, bringing the very places before our eyes. greater has been our pleasure; even as a child whose eye tracks the sun-set across the sea, and believes that the trailing pathway of gold ends only on the threshold of heaven. "The solemn woods have to us seemed like the great cathedrals which God himself had erected, as if a holier religion reigned there than was ever found beneath the towering fabrics erected by the hand of man. The deep roaring of the winds had a sound to us unlike aught earthly; the rustling of the leaves in gentler gales, awoke the heart unaware to prayer; we felt not the same while in the midst of such shadowy scenery. The pillars hewn and carved, and upreared by mortal hands, look not so grand and reverential as an aisle of ancient oaks, tossing their gnarled boughs above our heads, and admitting through the massy roof partial openings of the sky. The organ never fell upon our ears with the same solemnity as the roar of the ocean, beating upon a solitary shore. Between the walls of high and lofty mountains we have felt an inward awe, which the vaulted abbey could never awaken; for over the one hung the great image of the Creator, above the other, the builder man. 66 Ruins only approach the sublime when they are gray and vast, and time has erased their history. To us the Pyramids would not convey such images of mysterious and melancholy grandeur as the naked and rugged pile of Stonehenge. The untraceable Past having long since claimed it for his own, and handed it to Eternity, it seems tinged with the first sunshine which broke upon the world, and may catch the last ray which may settle down upon the earth, ere the night of eternal silence and darkness descends upon it." Some of Miller's glowing descriptions of scenery, of rustic and hearty characters, his admiration "Of their old piety and of their glee," (KEATS,) The remind us at times of Rousseau. wanderings of St. Preux in the Pays de Vaud, as described in the twenty-third letter of the New Héloïse, are delicious. We behold him at one time enveloped in a drizzling cloud arising from a torrent thundering against the rocks at his feet; we gaze on yawning abysses, gloomy woods, suddenly opening on flowery plains,--a blending of the wild and cultivated,-horrid caverns, vineyards and cornfields among cliffs and precipices,-where are united almost all seasons in the same instant, every climate in the same spot; the tops of the mountains are variously illuminated, a mixture of light and shade,-the thunder storms far below him,-the purity of the air, producing tranquillity of soul,joined with the pleasure of looking on new scenes, plants, and birds. The disinterested zeal and humanity of the inhabitants are eloquently described. When St. Preux approaches any hamlet towards evening, the inhabitants are eager to entertain and lodge him in their houses, and he to whom the preference is given was always well pleased. They would receive no pay, and were "The same offended when it was proffered. simplicity exists among themselves: when the children are once arrived at maturity, all distinction between them and their parents seems to have ceased; their domestics are seated at the same table with their masters; the same liberty reigns in the cottage as in the republic, and each family is an epitome of the state.' Ils en usent entre eux avec la même simplicité : les enfants en âge de raison sont les égaux de leurs pères : les domestiques s'asseyent à table avec leur maitres; la mème liberté regne dans les maisons et dans la republique, et la famille est l'image de l'état." No wonder that Julia in her reply to this eloquent epistle exclaims: La relation de votre voyage est charmante; elle me feroit aimer celui qui l'a écrite quand bien même je ne le connoitrois pas.' There is also a beautiful picture of a fine breathing landscape, and the portrait of a happy man, where Werter is represented sitting beneath some lime trees, which spread their branches over a little green in front of a church, where he has a fine view of the country, and is surrounded by cottages and barns, and an old woman lives close by, who sells wine, coffee and cakes. Here Werter sits and reads Homer.* It is rather strange that we have no version, in English, of the "Sorrows of Werter," direct from the German. The English one, in common use, is a translation from the French. We have now before us a French translation printed at Maestricht in 1776. It contains two pictures; one represents Charlotte cutting off slices of bread and butter for the children, and the other is a view of Werter's room. In the last letter of this work occurs the following affecting passage. We copy from the French: "Quand dans une belle soirée d'été, tu te promeneras vers la montagne, ressouviens toi de moi; rappelle toi comme tu m'as vu souvent monter de la vallée; leve les yeux vers la cimetière qui renferme ma tombe, et vois aux derniers rayons du soleil comme le vent du soir fait ondoyer l'herbe haute qui la couvre. J'étois tranquille en commençant ma lettre, mais en me retraçant vivement tous ces objets, voilà que je pleure comme un enfant." Now for the English: "When in a fine evening of summer you walk towards the mountains, think of me; |